Archive for
July, 2007
— July 12, 2007
If you are trying to logon to Gentle Giant’s web site right now, you might find that it is really. really slow. Looks like everyone is getting on in anticipation of the San Diego Exclusive pre-orders. This is in spite of the fact that Gentle Giant announced they recently upgraded their servers.
Update: Gentle Giant just updated their blog to announce that the San Diego exclusive pre-orders will go live sometime after 1PM Pacific time. That 4PM Eastern time, which is where I am.
— July 11, 2007
I decided to put together a list of Gentle Giant exclusives for 2007 that have been announced so far. I counted 23, 18 of which are event exclusives and 3 which are retailer exclusives. Here is the most current list.
- Commander Gree mini bust – 2500 - Star Wars Celebration IV
- Commander Neyo mini bust – 1500 - Gentle Giant @ Blister Event Tokyo
- Commander Bly mini bust – 2000 - Gentle Giant @ Forbidden Planet Event UK
- Commander Cody mini bust – 3500 - San Diego Comic-Con 2007
- Commander Bacara mini bust – 2000 - Baltimore Comic-Con
- Darth Malak mini bust – 2000 - Star Wars Celebration IV
- Spirit of Yoda mini bust – 2500 - Star Wars Celebration IV
- Luna Lovegood mini bust – 1000 - San Diego Comic-Con 2007
- Glorfindel mini bust – 500 - San Diego Comic-Con 2007
- Star Wars Animated Yoda and R2-D2 Maquette – 2500 - Traveling World Tour Exclusive
- Star Wars Bust-Ups Luke and Han in Stormtrooper Disguise 2-pack - Traveling World Tour Exclusive
- Star Wars Animated Boba Fett Black and White Maquette - 250 pieces for raffle
- Star Wars Animated Princess Leia Black and White Maquette - 250 pieces for raffle
- Star Wars Animated Darth Vader Black and White Maquette - 250 pieces for raffle
- Star Wars Animated C-3PO Black and White Maquette - 250 pieces for raffle
- Star Wars Animated Luke Skywalker Black and White Maquette - 250 pieces for raffle
- Star Wars Animated Boba Fett (Classic Animation) Maquette - 700 - Star Wars Celebration IV
- Star Wars – Darth Vader Jumbo Chubby – Debut 1st 1000 Edition
- Harry Potter Exclusive Merperson Mini Bust with Grindylow Statue - 500 - AFX Exclusive
- Star Wars Deluxe Coruscant Clone Trooper Mini Bust Exclusive - 2,500 - AFX Exclusive
- Star Wars Mace Windu Animated Clone Wars Maquette - 1,000 - StarWarsShop.com Exclusive
- Star Wars Mynock Hunt Chewbacca Mini Bust - Diamond Comics Exclusive
- Animated Blackhole Stormtrooper Maquette - 1,000 - Premiere Guild Exclusive
If you know of any I have missed, please leave them in the comments. Thanks.
Updated: 8/4/07
— July 11, 2007
Gentle Giant just sent out an e-mail to collector club members stating that due to the planned server upgrade not being complete in time, they are delaying the San Diego pre-orders by one day to Thursday, July 12th. The pre-orders were originally scheduled for tomorrow.
On a related note, Gentle Giant gave some specifics in the e-mail about their planned server configuration. After the upgrade, Gentle Giant says that they will have 4 dedicated servers for their e-commerce. All I can say is, wow. That is some serious power. I can only imagine how much traffic they get during these pre-orders. Let’s hope they can handle it now.
— July 10, 2007
Here’s something a rebelscum forum member brought to my attention. On this post on Gentle Giant’s web site, they say that the Obi-Wan A New Hope mini bust edition size was set at 5500. In the store product page for Obi-Wan, it also states that the edition size is 5500. Yet, on the mini bust itself, the edition size is 6000. Can anybody think of an explanation for this? Weird.
— July 10, 2007
I am starting a new feature here called “Gentle Giant Quotes” where we will remind you of infamous sayings from Gentle Giant history. Here is one left on their blog on December 17, 2006 that foreshadows ominous things to come.
We expect to have the Animated Black and White Maquettes available on our site once it is completed after the New Year. These will only be available for offer to the Premiere Guild Members.
Please note that the quantities on these pieces are extremely limited, so we are expecting to implement our brand new raffle process to ensure equitable distribution.
There you go. In December, Gentle Giant first mentions the raffle process for distributing to Premiere Guild members the black and white maquette exclusives they were releasing for Blister in Japan. Little did we know this process would be used for every convention exclusive GG planned to release in 2007. This has been Gentle Giant Quotes.
— July 10, 2007
The other day I posted on how the winner selection for the Premiere Guild raffle for the exclusive Commander Neyo bust was not random but was based on zip code. This was based on premiere guild members who won that reported on various Gentle Giant collectors forums and on auctions found on eBay.
More information has come to my attention that proves that the Premiere Guild raffles are not random at all but instead are based on criteria that changes with each raffle. This information comes from Gentle Giant itself from a comment left on the GG blog from GG employee Jewel. Here is her full comment left here.
On July 06, 2007 02:45 PM, Jewell Morson said…
Wow, 666 comments!
How the random selection works:
Each time the raffle selection process is run the system auto sorts and shuffles the entries at least 3 times then makes the selection of winners. This process is repeated until all winners have been selected. The sorting criterion varies each time a raffle is executed.
We have looked into the most recent raffles and the same process was used during the selection of the winners.
Just a reminder…
As we have stated before, the blog is available for our collectors to make comments, offer suggestions and even provide constructive criticism to Gentle Giant Ltd. However, this is not the forum to put down other blogger’s opinions or insult one another. Racial, sexist, derogatory and defaming comments made against other bloggers will not be tolerated. If this continues we will have to resort to deleting individual posts and if it persists, turning off comments all together. We will also address this situation on an individual basis.
Please contact customerservice@gentlegiantstudios.com directly, if you need additional information or if you have any questions
Thank you,
Jewell
Gentle Giant LTD
So according to Jewel, the raffle entries are sorted before they are chosen, by criteria that changes every raffle. I guess we now know that GG doesn’t understand the meaning of “random.” Just because entries were chosen randomly from a list that has been pre-sorted doesn’t mean the raffle was random. The fact that they are sorting the lists at all means that the selection process is NOT random.
In this case, the sorting criteria was zip code. So the list was sorted by zip code and entries were only selected from a group of zip codes that came from about 10 or so states all in the Northeast. Needless to say, even if GG thinks this is random, it was not fair to members who live throughout the rest of the country who entered. These members did not have a fair chance because they did not live in the selected zip codes.
Gentle Giant needs to do a few things here to correct the problem. First of all, what’s done is done. We can’t change the outcome of the Neyo raffle. So to ensure that there will be fewer problems in the future, I suggest that Gentle Giant not use the words “random” to describe these raffles, if indeed they are not random. In addition, Gentle Giant needs to ensure that whatever criteria they use to select winners, it needs to remain fair for all who enter. Ideally, the raffles should be totally random and not pre-sorted by any criteria.
But to really give the Premiere Guild members what they paid for, GG needs to get rid of the raffles altogether and give us what they promised which is access for all premiere guild members to all convention exclusives.
Full Disclosure: I am a Gentle Giant Premiere Guild member.
— July 10, 2007
Action Figure Express sent out an e-mail over the weekend stating that their exclusive Harry Potter Merperson mini bust is now in stock and if you pre-ordered, it is now shipping. I am actually surprised that this one did not sell out, and that it is still available.
I had heard that this would be shipping this week because I had to call last week to update my credit card info. Also, the rep I spoke to said the Coruscant Clone Trooper exclusive bust would be shipping in 2 weeks. This was a week ago. However, some rebelscum forum members are reporting they were also told this weeks ago, so who knows. Hopefully, this will ship sometime this month.
— July 9, 2007
In June, Gentle Giant sent out a Special Edition 100th Bust-up Chrome Boba Fett bust-up as a free gift for the first 500 members of the premiere guild. The note sent with this bust-up stated that this was not the free gift the premiere guild members were supposed to receive.
The Premiere Guild was started at the end of 2006. Nobody knows how many premiere guild members there actually are but now we know for sure there are at least 500. Rebelscum forum members speculated the number was reached months ago, but recent evidence shows otherwise. Members that joined as recently as June 2007 received the e-mail and the bust-up. But some members that joined before that time reported not receiving anything.
Again, Gentle Giant has not publicly commented on this situation.
Full Disclosure: I am a Gentle Giant Premiere Guild member.
— July 9, 2007
More than a week after the premiere guild raffle for the Commander Neyo Blister Exclusive bust was closed, it appears that the way that Gentle Giant handled the selection of the raffle winners was flawed. I say that the raffle appears to be flawed meaning the winners were not chosen randomly. Instead, the winners of the raffle appear to have been chosen based on zip code.
Forum members noticed after several premiere guild members started reporting whether or not they won the raffle, that a pattern begin to emerge. Readers saw that only members that lived in the northeastern states won the Neyo bust after entering the raffle. Last I read about 50 members reported winning the bust, all within the same few states. Here is a list of the states with corresponding zip codes.
00100 - 00999 = Foreign Countries
01001 - 02791 = MA
02801 - 02940 = RI
03031 - 03897 = NH
03901 - 04992 = ME
05001 - 05907 = VT
06001 - 06928 = CT
07001 - 08989 = NJ
10000 - 14975 = NY
17501 - 19640 = PA
The only exception found was one winner who lived in Virginia. In addition, eBay auctions for Neyo were checked. Except for those originating in Japan, all the Neyo auctions on eBay were from the above listed states.
Gentle Giant has not yet released any official statement about this situation. But many premiere guild members upset because if this is true then the raffle was not random. It is likely we will never know the facts about the entire situation due to Gentle Giant’s silence.
To sum it up, this makes Gentle Giant look bad. Ignoring the situation makes them look even worse. However, ignoring fan’s complaints seems to be their standard public relations strategy. I am baffled as to why any company would behave this way. It is likely due to the fact that their bottom line is not being hurt yet. I feel that Gentle Giant will never make any changes unless this happens.
Update: GG employee Jewel responded in their blog comments that the raffles winners are sorted by certain criteria before they are selected proving they are not random. Read the full post here.
Full Disclosure: I am a Gentle Giant Premiere Guild member.
— July 7, 2007
Star Wars Shop posted images of the Tusken Raider mini bust on their site yesterday. The Tusken Raider mini bust comes with interchangeable arms/weapons, and according to Gentle Giant will be available January 2008. You can see both in the images below. Click on the images below to view the fullsize images.
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